School in Tokyo lets students study with cute maids as they learn programming skills

Institution aims to please maid fans and help maids prepare for eventual career changes.

As the center of Japan’s academic and economic spheres, Tokyo has many trade schools where adult students can learn skills to deepen their professional specialization or to prepare for a career change. But one educational institution, located in the Shibuya neighborhood, is different from all the others.

It’s not the subject matter that’s so unique, since it’s one of countless facilities offering programming courses. No, what makes this school special is that in each class, among your classmates will be a cute maid.

When students walk through the door of MadeInMaidFamily, the maids greet them with “Okaeri nasaimase” (“Welcome home,”), the same prim and proper salutation that customers get at a maid cafe. Instead of filling the role of instructor, the maids study alongside the paying students, whom they refer to as “sempai,” or “upperclassman.”

Obviously, the school’s management hopes that having maids for classmates will draw in male customers and keep them motivated to continue attending classes. Lessons are designed to encourage interaction between students, with the maids alternately offering and asking for help from their non-maid classmates.

However, MadeInMaidFamily’s says its goal isn’t just to appeal to maid fans, but to provide a service for the maids themselves as well. Over the past decade, maid cafes and other maid related businesses have sprouted up all over Japan, staffed by a sizable maid workforce. However, the premium placed on youth in maid cafes means being a maid isn’t really a job you can count on doing very long past your mid-20s, and so MadeInMaidFamily hopes that by having maids attend its classes, the young ladies will be able to learn more marketable skills than drawing pictures with ketchup on rice omelets, playing rock-paper-scissors, and other common maid cafe work tasks.

MadeInMaidFamily’s lessons cover rotating topics are offered on an individual basis, priced at 2,000 yen (US$18) for a three-hour session that includes an hour of “interaction time” between classmates. Reservations can be made through the school’s website here.